At 8am on Monday, assistant brewer at Atlantic Brewery, near Newquay, Paul Hazeldine, got the first brew of the week under way. All the malt was ready to go, and the hops… well, the hops were about to be picked.
Atlantic owner and head brewer, Stuart Thomson, had invited me over for something you don’t do often in Cornwall — hop picking. He has four rows of Fuggles bines, as well as a few Pilgrim and Bramling Cross plants, which he has been growing since 2003. The aim of the day was to create a green hop beer, which was to be a collaboration with Joe Thomson, of Penpont and Firebrand breweries, with malt generously supplied by St Austell Brewery.
Stuart brews organically, and in 2003 the only organic hops available to him were Fuggles and First Gold. He planted some of the latter as well, but eventually stuck with the Fuggles, although there is a suspicion that some of the First Gold may have seeded and mixed themselves in with the Fuggles bines.
A former software develop, he and his family moved to Treisaac Farm, close to Newquay airport, in 1994, and developed a smallholding before setting up the brewery. There’s solar power, masses of home-grown fruit and veg, and free-range chickens giving a feel of rural self-sufficiency, and the sight of the hop plants, verdant and full, laden with hop cones, only adds to the idyllic vision. Stuart said: “This is by far the best harvest yet.”
It took us three hours or so to pick the 7kg that were required for the recipe, which Stuart and Joe came up with together, aiming for a 5% ABV harvest ale halfway between a pale and a red, on which I shall report back in due course. A heavier weight of fresh hops were needed than if dried or pelleted hops had been used, and they were stacked past the top of the tank as the boil got under way.
All the hops were picked by hand, with nothing more technical than a step ladder as an aid, and it made me appreciate, after just over three hours, how those armies of family hop pickers who descended on the Kent hop fields in years gone by would have felt after days and weeks of such activity. Three hours hop picking was tough, although very rewarding, of course. But every day for a few weeks? No thanks.
Meanwhile, such is the bumper crop that Stuart will easily have the same amount of hops again to pick before the harvesting window ends, so don’t rule out another green brew, or perhaps a beer made with the hops once they have been dried in the brewer’s very innovative drying cupboard!
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